Wellington Mews flats next to Pentonville Prison

THE Ministry of Justice received just £4.7million – equivalent to 0.035 per cent of its yearly spend – after selling off public land to a private developer as it ignored a 13-year campaign for homes to be handed over to the council.

The Tribune reported last year how 28 flats on Wellington Mews, which had been empty for a decade, were sold by the MoJ, but the department would not disclose the buyer or any details of the sale.

We can now reveal that the flats next to Pentonville Prison – desper­ately needed three- and four-bedroom homes – were handed over to Water Mews Limited, a property investment and development company owned by the Mountley Group, for a meagre £4.675m.

Water Mews’ director Hersch Schneck heads up 75 separate companies in the group, and previously won a legal case against the government after a planning application was refused for a development that offered no affordable housing.

His planning adviser, Tony Allen, said they were not required to provide any affordable housing under that type of development – which was proven in the High Court.

The case against West Berkshire Council led to 109 one- and two-bedroom flats being built, which are now being let out at the cost of £1,000 a month.

Now planning experts for the buyer say they are aware of Islington’s requirement of 50 per cent “affordable housing” for new developments, but can make “no guarantee” that they will be able to fulfil it.

Mr Allen told the Tribune that the development would retain “some” family-sized units, and that they would try to get “as close as possible” to the affordable housing requirements.

Campaigners projected messages onto the flats [L’Onion Project]

He said he hoped to present a public plan “fairly quickly”, but was waiting to hear back from the GLA to see whether there would be grant funding available to ensure Wellington Mews complies with the Town Hall’s planning policies.

There has been outrage amongst housing campaigners that the homes have been lost to a private developer, when councillors consistently called for their own Labour government to hand the flats over to help ease the ever-worsening housing crisis. A fact repeated again and again is that there are 16,500 people currently on the borough’s social housing waiting list.

Morag Gillie, from Islington Homes for All, said: “It’s absolutely shameful that the MoJ couldn’t have offered that to the council or found some way of turning them into 28 family council houses.

“We believe that this public land shouldn’t have been sold off to private developers. This is a betrayal of the Labour government – this is once again putting the interests of private developers above the interests of the local community.”

She added: “It is tragic, it’s not a huge amount and the council surely could have found some way to fund that.”

Leader of Islington Council Una O’Halloran, who had backed the campaign to bring the homes back into council control, agreed that the blame for these flats being lost to a private development lay at the feet of the Labour government.

She told the Tribune: “I am disappointed. They should have given them to us, and it is a let down. We would have wanted them to be 100 per cent for social rent, but we will now fight to make sure they at least meet our planning policies of 50 per cent affordable.”

When asked about the campaigners’ demands for 100 per cent social housing, Mr Allen said: “[When we go out to the public], some of the feedback will be they want 100 per cent affordable housing. I can’t deal with that, we don’t have to provide 100 per cent affordable housing.

“From the outside, everybody believes that every developer makes an absolute fortune – I can tell you they don’t.”

On anger over the sale, he added: “My client can’t determine what the MoJ do and don’t do. The decision to sell on the open market was one directly for the MoJ to decide.

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “Securing the best value for taxpayers has been our priority throughout this process and every penny from this sale will be reinvested into the justice system.”

A spokesperson for the council said: “Applications are assessed against relevant policies in the council’s Local Plan. These policies include the requirement for sites in former public sector ownership to provide 50 per cent on-site affordable housing, and any scheme will need to demonstrate how it addresses this policy.”